


What Love Means

by The_Jeneral



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, I haven't done the New Canton race missions yet, and race missions (Abel side), so some of this might be wrong, sorry man!, spoilers through S2M4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 16:02:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1020637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Jeneral/pseuds/The_Jeneral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three short fics on the different meanings of love in life after the apocalypse.   Becca Harrison loves her daughter, Molly.  Maxine still loves Paula.  Sam may love more than one Runner Five.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Love Means Leaving

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Zombies, Write! II fic exchange for NikkoLee88. I chose the prompt "Love in the Era of Zombies." This is my first attempt at writing present tense, and I'm not sure how good an idea that was, since there were flashbacks involved. So if it reads clunky, that's why.

Part One - Love Means Leaving

Leaving is the last thing Becca Harrison wants to do.

First the farmhouse.  They had been safe there, she and Ed and Molly.  Becca had even started to entertain the idea of settling there and making it a home.  Ed had been against the idea of going to Abel Township for help, he wanted to stay out here on their own.  Stubborn man, her husband.  But she’d made the best of it, had started to even make plans to fix up the old farmhouse, once the zombies had wandered off and found somewhere else to shamble around in aimless circles.

But then Ed didn't come back.  For five nights.  Six days.  He didn't come back.  On that sixth morning, Becca knows it’s time to leave.

She gathers what supplies she can in a rucksack and slings Molly onto her hip.  In a fit of optimism she scribbles a note before setting off on the road to Abel.  She doesn’t want to leave – not without Ed.  It’s the last thing she wants to do.  But Ed’s not coming back, and Becca has to think about Molly.

She does everything right.  Starts off early in the day, giving herself plenty of time to walk the eight miles or so to Abel before dark.  She keeps to the road, out in the open where there’s good visibility.  It’s a beautiful day – sunny and clear, and while Molly babbles nonsense to Mr. Rabbit, Becca can almost pretend that it’s an ordinary day, and they are simply mother and daughter out for a walk.

It’s the pretending that does her in.  She stops paying attention for a second – just a second! – and almost steps on a crawler inching along the side of the road.  It snags her ankle, and while she struggles to pull away and not drop Molly at the same time, she feels teeth on her skin, and pain bursts in a bright bloom all through her.  Adrenaline takes hold, and she tears out of the zombie’s grip – not wanting to think about the flesh she leaves behind – and flees.  But the clock has already started ticking for her.  She knows that.

She finds the safest place she can for Molly – out in the open, hopefully close enough to the township that a supply runner will find her, or she’ll show up on someone’s scanner.  She tucks a blanket around Molly and leaves the rucksack of supplies next to her.  Becca won’t need them anymore.  As she bends to give Molly one last kiss on top of her head – that baby-fine hair, she’s going to miss it so much – she can already feel something happening, _changing_ , inside of her.   She doesn’t want to leave – it’s the last thing she wants to do.  But the coughing starts as she straightens up again and she knows that she has to get away, as far away from her daughter as she can before she turns.

Becca plunges into the woods and skids down an embankment.  It’s not until she falls to her hands and knees in the dirt that she realizes she still has Mr. Rabbit.  Her head whirls around, looking back.  Molly needs Mr. Rabbit.  But Becca had already left once.  She’s not sure she has it in her to do it again.  With her remaining strength she hurls the stuffed animal up the hill, where it lands near the edge of the road.  All she can do now is hope that someone finds it.  Finds Molly.

Becca doesn’t want to leave.  It’s the last thing she wants to do.  And as it turns out, leaving is the last thing she does.


	2. Love Means to Keep Going

Part Two - Love Means to Keep Going

“Hello, sweetheart.”

Maxine cringes now at the words.  She can’t help it.  The sound of Paula’s voice- _her_ Paula, the way she was before the outbreak and before the world went crazy – hits her like a sharp fist to the lungs and for a few seconds it’s hard to breathe.  She misses Paula – _her_ Paula – so much. 

She’s still not sure what to make of everything.  After listening to that CD for what seemed like several hundred times in the first few days since Runner Five brought it back for her, Maxine had resolved herself to the inevitable: that Paula was gone, and all Maxine had of her was her work.  These files, notes, and charts. 

And that CD.  Eugene had ripped the sound file to a USB drive for her, and Paula’s voice now resides safely on Maxine’s laptop, one of the few working computers in Abel.  And in these small hours of the morning, while the township sleeps, Maxine indulges in a precious cup or two of disgusting instant coffee – she’d never developed a taste for tea, can’t take the American out of the girl – and pores over Paula’s files.  She makes her own notes, and feels herself grow a little misty-eyed at the sight of her handwriting next to Paula’s, letters from different pens twining together like lovers holding hands.  And she plays the recording.  Over and over, on a loop.  Sometimes she tells herself that she’s listening for clues, trying to remember details in Paula’s words that might help her unlock something in the files.  But she knows she’s really doing it to hear Paula’s voice.  Because sometimes she can turn off all the doubt and confusion, make it all go away and just for a few minutes have her girlfriend back.

But those minutes are brief.  So brief.  All too soon the recording ends and then cycles back to the beginning.  “Hello, sweetheart.”  And Maxine cringes again.  The words will always be a punch to the heart.  Her voice on this recording, even when cracking with despair, is alive – _so alive_ \- compared to the recording of Paula’s voice that she heard at Jeffro Complex.  That Paula wasn’t her Paula at all.  She had become someone else – Van Ark’s Paula.  Maxine doesn’t want to think about what Paula might be doing with Van Ark.  She doesn’t want to think about why.  She wants to find a cure.  Paula had wanted that too, once.  _Her_ Paula had wanted that. 

But _her_ Paula is gone.  She knows that, she’s pretty close to accepting it.  So now all Maxine can do to honor her memory is to keep going.  To continue Paula’s research, pick up where she had left off.  No matter what, she knows that deep down there’s a part of Paula that would want that. And that’s the part of Paula that Maxine wants to remember.  That part is _her_ Paula.


	3. Love Means Letting Her In

Part Three - Love Means Letting Her In

Sam had never referred to Alice as Runner Five when she was out in the field.  Well, he had certainly never called her that inside the gates of Abel either, but when she was out on a run, she was always Alice.  Never Five.  Because… well, because she was Alice, wasn’t she?  And if she hadn’t been killed by zombies, she and Sam had been well on their way to… something.  Sam doesn’t like to think about it too much, since all the potential of what could have been the most meaningful relationship of his life had been pretty effectively wiped out.  First by the zombie horde in the hospital, and then by a sniper’s bullet.  Not that Sam had been thinking about pursuing a relationship with Alice-as-zombie.  Because that was just weird.  And disgusting.

And getting off topic.

No, Sam had never called Alice by her runner number.  And, conversely, he never calls Runner Five by her given name.  He knows her name, of course.  He knows everyone’s names, and usually manages to slip up and call a runner by their name instead of their number at least once during a mission, because that’s the kind of consummate professional he is.  So it would stand to reason that he would use Five’s name, just once in a while.  But he never does.  He doesn’t want to. 

He can’t let her in.

He liked Five well enough when she first arrived at Abel.  She was willing to pitch in, do whatever was required.  One of those quiet types who didn’t waste time with chatter, but would occasionally drop a quip or observation that would stun the room into silence.  Then she’d shrug and give a little half-smile as though nothing had happened.  She was pleasant enough, and clever enough, and Sam liked her fine at first.  But he didn’t use her name.  He had just lost Alice, and his heart felt shredded.  He didn’t want to learn any other names.  Not yet. 

If Sam has to guess, he would say that it started to change the night she was trapped out after dark.  He’d stayed up all night with her, because he couldn’t bear to turn off his headset and leave her with silence.  Even if she was dead and there was no one to hear him, he couldn’t do that to her.  So he had stayed up through the darkest part of the night, telling her the darkest secrets of his heart.  He had started saying goodbye to her, because it was frankly less heartbreaking to carry on as though she were dead and be pleasantly surprised (to put it mildly) when she turned up alive, rather than hope for the best.  But that’s no surprise – the zombie apocalypse did tend to beat most of your optimism out of you.  And watching your sort-of-girlfriend get shot in the head after being turned into a zombie certainly took care of the rest.

But then she had come home.  She had survived.  Without even thinking about it, he had tossed his headset down and charged out into the yard to meet her, getting to her before the gates had even finished closing behind her.  And instead of taking him to task for the things he had said – failed engineering degree, his shame about his family, even his views on the zombie apocalypse – she had simply reached for him, pulling him close into an embrace that gave comfort as much as it sought it out.  And he had welcomed it.  Because yeah, he was right.  They had formed a sort of simpatico. 

But he still kept calling her Five.  Still kept some semblance of distance.  He wasn’t ready to let anyone else in.

So much had happened since then.  Zombies.  Rocket launchers.  Zombies _with_ rocket launchers.  A bizarre tentative alliance with New Canton, which still makes Sam feel like they’re teaming up with a fleet of Daleks or something.  But uniting against a greater evil – does that make Professor Van Ark the Master?  He finds himself wanting to make that joke to Five on more than one occasion, but he can’t remember if she’s a Doctor Who fan or not.  Not all Americans are, he’s found, much to his dismay.  And besides, Five isn’t around all that much anyway.  She seems to be in high demand lately, doing a lot of runs out of New Canton, working with Nadia instead of with him.  It’s not like Sam is jealous or anything, he just finds he misses working with her.  Misses the good old days, when he could send Five to a toy shop for Demons and Darkness modules, both of them confident that he would guide her safely home again.

It’s that sense of nostalgia that makes him turn on his scanners that day, checking up on things, just in time to see Nadia send Five into Dedlock territory.  He can't put on his headset fast enough.

He doesn't start shaking until Five is back at Abel, soaking wet from the knees down from wading through that stream.  She had reported straight to Dr. Myers, and Sam had gone to Major De Santa to report on Nadia’s betrayal.  As a result, he doesn’t see Five until much later that day, when afternoon is turning into evening and the sky is all golden and purple with the setting sun.  Five is barefoot, her trainers left out to dry in the night air, she’s silhouetted against the growing dark, staring out onto the landscape beyond the hastily-repaired gates.

She doesn’t turn at his approach, but she must have heard him coming because she doesn’t jump when he touches her shoulder.  This time he reaches for her, and when she allows him to pull her into him he discovers that she is shaking too. 

“She could have killed me, Sam.”

“Yeah.”  He’s surprised at how calm he sounds, considering how he had practically screamed those same words at the major a couple hours ago.  His throat was still sore from it.

“You saved me.” 

Any other day he would have brushed that off with some false bravado, or made a cheesy, if slightly inappropriate, joke.  But instead he just tightens his arm around her shoulders and they look out beyond the gates together and then he realizes.

He doesn’t need to use her name.  He’s already let her in.


End file.
